In sales, social skills are vital. The behaviors and habits that enable reps to engage prospects are frequently the difference between hitting and missing quota. It’s been estimated that a bad meeting with a prospect can lock the rep and her company out of the account for upwards of 18 months.

Although it may seem counter-intuitive, role-playing for sales reps can cause a stress-filled moment of panic. Sellers spend the bulk of each day performing – social situations where improvisational skills may be the difference between missing a quota or triggering a commission accelerator.

The driving-force behind your B2B sales funnel is the new, savvy and hyper-informed buyer. Yep. They come to the table already loaded with questions and demands that challenge even the most skilled sales reps. According to Forrester Research, buyers are estimated to go through 70 to 90 percent of the buyer journey before engaging a sales rep, placing an enormous hurdle for reps to overcome and catch up – or to reset.

Sales reps know that nothing engages a buyer quite like a good story. The “Storytelling Enterprise” has been grabbing attention as a fresh approach to harness a company’s hard-won insights in the form of stories delivered directly to the sales team. It is a powerful way to scale what sales reps have always known – great stories move prospects to action.

Every Chief Sales Officer must seize growth opportunities. Yet these days, they face an uphill battle. Now more than ever, prospects view salesmen and saleswomen as time-sucking annoyances. In fact, they say 90% of sales calls are a “waste of time*.

To bring in new accounts at scale, conventional wisdom is to first invest in a CRM and sales process, then invest in lead generation and efficiency tools and then – maybe – invest in making the sales interactions valuable for the prospect.